Report on complaint against TN Minister to be submitted today

An enquiry report of Cuddalore Collector and District Election Officer on the alleged incident of cash distribution by Commercial Taxes and Registration Minister M.C. Sampath will be submitted to Chief Electoral Officer Praveen Kumar on Wednesday.

Stating this, Kirlosh Kumar, Collector, told The Hindu over the phone that a Tahsildar was carrying out a probe into the incident.

On Saturday, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam submitted a complaint to the CEO that Mr. Sampath had distributed cash to some voters during his campaign in the Cuddalore Lok Sabha constituency last week.

As regards another complaint of a police official distributing masks displaying the face of Chief Minister Jayalalithaa in Kallakurichi to people on Sunday, Mr. Kumar said the matter had been referred to Director General of Police for his response.

On applications submitted by political parties for the clearance of advertisements, the CEO replied that the DMK and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam were the only two parties to have given the applications, both of which had been cleared.

As for the status on cases filed by the authorities for defacement of public and private properties, A. Karthik, Special CEO, said that out of 54,926 complaints, action had been conclusively taken in respect of 52,258 instances. Till Monday, cash of Rs. 10.25 crore and non-cash items, valued at about Rs. 1.1 crore, had been seized.

The Chief Election Commissioner, should intervene immediately and take necessary action immediately against the Minister and the party for distributing cash to the voters. Please stop this Cash for Vote. This trend in Tamil Nadu must go forever otherwise we will have candidates who are having enormous black money, in other words, the winners will be only criminals.